Now reading:
Elizabeth Warren clings to tales of Indian ancestry while declining DNA test

Elizabeth Warren clings to tales of Indian ancestry while declining DNA test

Sen. Elizabeth Warren sought Sunday to bolster her shaky claims of Cherokee ancestry with the story of how her racist grandparents drove her parents to elope.

But Cherokee genealogist Twila Barnes says that account has its own credibility issues.

Ms. Barnes, who said her research into Ms. Warren’s family found “no evidence” of Native American ancestry, has challenged key elements of the senator’s tale of how her parents, Pauline Reed and Donald Herring, defied his parents by running off to marry.

“The problem with Warren’s story is that none of the evidence supports it,” said Ms. Barnes in a 2016 post on her Thoughts from Polly’s Granddaughter blog. “Her genealogy shows no indication of Cherokee ancestry. Her parents’ wedding doesn’t resemble an elopement. And additional evidence doesn’t show any indication of her Herring grandparents being Indian haters.”

Faced with renewed scrutiny over her heritage, however, Ms. Warren appeared Sunday on three morning news shows to give context to her claim of minority status made during her stints on the Harvard and University of Pennsylvania law faculties.

“You know, my mom and dad were born and raised out in Oklahoma, and my daddy was in his teens when he fell in love with my mother,” said the Massachusetts Democrat. “She was a beautiful girl who played the piano. And he was head over heels in love with her and wanted to marry her. And his family was bitterly opposed to that because she was part Native American.”

The Berkshire [Massachusetts] Eagle called last week on Ms. Warren to take a DNA test, a suggestion seconded by Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi, saying she “has nothing to lose but her Achilles’ heel” as the issue comes back to haunt her reelection campaign.

“I know who I am because of what my mother and my father told me, what my grandmother and my grandfather told me, what all my aunts and uncles told me, and my brothers,” Ms. Warren said. “It’s a part of who I am and no one’s ever going to take that away.”

The senator is not an enrolled member of any tribe, but has cited family lore to support her claim.

While Ms. Warren may genuinely believe the story of her star-crossed parents, Ms. Barnes has argued that the documentation doesn’t back it up.

She cited the friendship between Grant Herring, Ms. Warren’s paternal grandfather, and Carnall Wheeler, who was listed on the Cherokee Nation roll and mocked in his Virginia Military Institute yearbook as an “aboriginal.”

Documents show that the two played golf together and that Mr. Wheeler attended a 25th anniversary party for the Herrings in 1936.

“Clearly, Wheeler experienced some degree of racism in his life due to his being Indian,” said Ms. Barnes. “Despite this, there is one person we know who did not have a problem associating with him — Grant Herring, the grandfather of Elizabeth Warren, the same grandfather she claims was racist against Indians.”

The post was headlined, “Did Warren invent the story of racist grandparents?”

After Ms. Warren said in the Globe that her mother told her “nobody came to her wedding at all,” Ms. Barnes looked it up and found that her mother’s friend witnessed the ceremony, which was performed by a prominent Methodist clergyman, not a justice of the peace.

“This marriage does not look like an elopement. It looks very much like a Depression-era marriage ceremony instead,” said Ms. Barnes in an August 2012 post. “Sometimes people didn’t have a lot of money to spend on a wedding so they just obtained their license, got married and then went back home.”

She also found a detailed wedding announcement posted in the local newspaper in Wetumka, Oklahoma.

“If Ms. Warren’s parents eloped due to her mother being ‘Cherokee and Delaware’ and it was such a disgrace, why did they rush back to Wetumka the same day they were married and proudly announce it to everyone?” asked Ms. Barnes. “If there was shame associated with the marriage and it caused so many problems, why was it happily announced in the local paper?”

Given that Ms. Warren’s father had just turned 21, the age after which he could legally marry in Oklahoma without his parents’ permission, “Maybe his parents feared if he got married, he would drop out of college. And according to the evidence, that is exactly what happened,” she said.

Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson vouched for the credibility of Ms. Barnes’ fact-finding.

“I have never seen anything that called into question the integrity of Twila Barnes’ research,” said Mr. Jacobson, who runs the Legal Insurrection blog. “To the contrary, she has meticulously researched Warren’s family lineage demonstrating no Native American ancestry, as well as facts rebutting Warren’s family lore stories.”

Accusations that Ms. Warren gamed the system to advance her legal career have dogged her since her first Senate race in 2012, although she has insisted — and the universities have backed her up — that she received no preferential treatment in hiring by citing Native American ancestry.

President Trump has drawn attention to the issue by dubbing her “Pocahontas,” prompting Ms. Warren to accuse him of making racial slurs and increase her focus on Native American issues.

“I went to speak to Native American tribal leaders, and I made a promise to them, that every time President Trump wants to try to throw out some kind of racial slur, he wants to try to attack me, I’m going to use it as a chance to lift up their stories,” Ms. Warren told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

She pointed to the high rates of violence against Native American women.

“Native women are subjected to sexual violence at rates much higher than any other group in our country,” Ms. Warren said. “We need to put some focus on this, and we need to make some changes on this. We owe it to people living in Native communities.”

Join the discussion

Comment navigation

Know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Warren has now reached the political stage which is called DANGEROUS because like most Liberal insane minds, hers has degenerated into believing her our lies, media propaganda, and made up imagined history, just like when Hillary fell off the cliff and actually started to believe she was named after explorer/Mountain climbing Sir Edmund Hillary. Her emotionally truth distracting “Indian Love Song” tale of passion amongst the Buffalo weeds will obviously move the 32% of Americans who live in their dreams/emotions and vote Democrat. But the Majority of Reality driven voters want the DNA results to unmask this Liberal deceiver in disguise. Imagining her Grandparents into a position of being racist, just makes them two more casualties and bodies of untruth that she seeks to climb over to get to the top of her profession, which is lying. What a pathetic excuse for a human, and so unworthy to lead a great American people of integrity in need of being set free of politicians like her who build careers based on divisive racial lies, that murder the truth that will unite us and free us from racial hate.

Excellent comments, inluminatuo. How about starting a petition demanding that Warren submit to a DNA test and prove one way or the other that she has (or doesn’t have) even a smidgeon of Native American ancestry. (It should quickly go viral!) If she refuses, she should be forever shamed and shackled with the oh-so-appropriate nickname “Fauxcahontas.”

Sadly, it’s obvious that she would never agree to an independent test…because the truth of her fraud would be on display for all to see.

Well, for openers, TheDove, it could be on the grounds that she FRAUDULENTLY claimed minority ethnicity in order to land that cushy Harvard teaching gig which was reserved for somebody of minority ethnicity. It was a highly-paid “token” position Hah-vahd created EXPRESSLY to show how “diverse” they are, and Lie-Awatha scammed her way into it. And to avoid being charged with the FRAUD she committed, it is necessary for her to take a DNA test to PROVE she has the ethnicity she “claimed.” Amazing that Hah-vahd just took her word for it, when she appears to be “lily white” and is a KNOWN nut case and LIAR!

If Warren is REALLY of Native American ancestry, she would take the DNA to prove it. Her declining to take the DNA test speaks volumes of her lie. She knows she is lying and doesn’t want to prove her lie. Someone should hold her down and get the DNA.

Relax everyone.
If she wants to identify as an original immigrant it’s no different than calling herself a man in today’s twisted liberal non-logic. If she wants to identify as a french poodle or coffee table that is her self given right. It is my right to identify her as french poodle stool.
I myself have no American Indian blood in my veins that I know of, but I was born here and as such, am a native American …. Not hyphenated!

What does one expect from a DemoRAT and a communist like Elizabeth the Fake. DemoRATS are liars, bull artists, hypocrites, race baiters, they do not know what gender they are and drama queens (this includes liberal males as well as liberal females).

Comical that Lieawatha continues that tale after US Ambassador to Useless Numpties has debunked her in-spades (not the first time I’ve pointed out that Nimrat Kaur Haley’s cheekbones are just as high as Fauxcohontas’ — and her non-naturalised parents have no First Nations ancestry whatsoever) — it’s obvious she knows she would be revealed as the queen of frauds!

If I were a betting man I would lay dollars to donuts that she has already had a test done secretly, which of course came back “Heap big lying “SQUAWK”,… not “squaw”. That’s why her refusals. She would be BROADCASTING a positive test result.

Typical democrat is warren. Living a lie has become a way of life to them. I really don’t care what she calls herself but do believe her entire life should be investigated and she should be criminally charged if discovered she profited by her claims of Indian blood coursing within her veins. Did she receive discounted college tuition ? Job offers ?

Oh, she’s taken a DNA test, probably several, and had them submitted under a phony name – with the results back of zero native American ancestry – because you KNOW that if a test came back showing even 0.01% native american, she’d be wearing the results around her neck on a plaque, and flaunting the paperwork on every news outlet she could find.

“Native women are subjected to sexual violence at rates much higher than any other group in our country,” Ms. Warren said. “We need to put some focus on this, and we need to make some changes on this. We owe it to people living in Native communities.”

Umm, for being an “Indian,” she has very little understanding of reservation law. Since a Reservation is part of an autonomous Nation, the US federal gov’t has very little control over what happens on it.

Clearly she’s looking for yet another fake scenario to bolster her popularity.

Pocahontas is a Democrat – FACTS have nothing to do with their positions or beliefs. Her desire to be part native American is driven by her politics, seeking an employment advantage, and MONEY! Of course, she will avoid any DNA test – indeed, she knows who she is (and isn’t)!

She is the typical corrupted liberal female rhino.
She was asked point blank. YES or NO. She gave the spin, spin, spin about her family and that no one will take that away from her. Lying corrupted politician rhino witch.

I am no fan of Pocahontas,, but I must tell this. My Great grandmother was always said to be full blooded Cherokee, her photograph says Cherokee with out a doubt. My cousin got a dna – no Native American dna in results, I did one – same results. We would be at least 12.5%, Now I read tests often miss Native American . I would advise her don’t do it, and Trump don’t see Mueller.

When people talk about DNA test it is either the Y chromosome or Mitochondria DNA

To go through the rest of your DNA takes more time and money than the typical $100 test

So if it was your dad’s mother who was an Indian it will not show up in your Mitochondria DNA since you got it from your mother and since he got his Y chromosome from his father it will not show up there either

If you have more of your DNA test the best it will tell you is if you have brown eyes and black hair, was making humor to show what will be found, similar DNA sequences which would be typical

They come to essentially unchanged and the mutations act as tags which make particular lines of lineage distinct

The problem with the rest of the DNA is it recombines to make you like no one else in the world, you will have sequences which are typical for a group, and will be consistent with such groups but it not as definitive as Mitochondria DNA and Y chromosome

I am 1% Native American, and do not consider myself to be Native American. That amount of DNA, does not qualify as Native American, as far as I am concerned. I remember reading that she had taken a DNA test, and the 1% was what HER heritage was. In my opinion, Elizabeth Warren is NOT Native American !

I’ve known only 2 guys who DID considered themselves partially native american. BOTH had 10% or more native american DNA.. Neither would have said had the results been in the single digits, they’d still class themselves as partially native american..

I myself am possibly 1/16th Mohawk (my paternal grandmother’s grandmother was Mohawk, but who knows about “full-blooded, though) which is approximately 6%.. so little that it is nothing more than an interesting footnote to me. But I have a brother who is quite into it, goes to “keeper” events and such…, so “whatever”. But I don’t know if 1/16th even qualifies for LEGAL consideration.

I don’t like her. But saying that, If indeed her family Is from Oklahoma, there is a large chance that there is some Native American blood in her. Unless she is really using it to gain privileges because of it, only then she would need to prove it. To my understanding, you have to be a certain percentage in order to gain benefits. Just claiming she has Native American blood in her means nothing. My mother was born in northeast Texas and raised in Oklahoma. She always told me that she had either 1/16th or 1/32nd Cherokee in her. There was no reason for me to doubt it. However, I never tried to use it to my advantage. I also feel the same about Al Franken. I did not care for him as either a comedian or a politician. I am glad he is out, but to use pictures and things that he did when he was a comedian is totally irrelevant to how he did things when he was in this senate.

She only made up that tale about her folks living and meeting in Oklahoma recently. Before that, her claim to Native American ancestry was supposedly on the basis of a picture of her great-grandmother and her family talking about what “high cheekbones” she had, “just like her meemaw.” The Cherokee registry people who investigate claims of tribal membership say there is NO EVIDENCE to support the tale about her parents, either!

The issue was never her heritage, was it? If we go back far enough we all will have black ancestors; (out of Africa) Right? The issue was that she checked the “RACE BOX” saying she was an American Indian. That act got her a job because the hiring agent, a University, gave preference to non whites. Many people think that because you have Indian ancestors, you are an Indian. That, of course is BS. The box doesn’t ask for heritage. It was a discriminator to give certain disadvantaged minorities a lower bar and the employer the crowing rights that says they don’t discriminate because they hire less qualified people because they are minorities. And she knew that, as did the University. They are both guilty of gaming the system and harming Injuns. The DNA test is meaningless. Just another misdirection by the press and the DNC. Chances are hers will show 1% indian, as many from the Oklahoma area will. BFD When it does she can claim she was right. But she was not.

Typical of her entire party, when they are cornered in a lie, they make up some imaginary abuse problem straight out of the Alinsky straw man argument playbook! Unfortunately this woman isn’t full of straw, American Indian DNA, but totally meaningless dodges to take the media heat off her. Whoever is putting the heat on her for DNA test can’t be of the MSM! Why would they attack their next Presidential candidate? Answer to why pictures tend to show her with her mouth open: because Democrats FEEL and TALK but DO NOTHING about problems.

In response to Elizabeth Warren’s “I know who I am” statement, I also know who you are, Senator Warren. You are a hypocritical, untrustworthy, liberal Democrat who has stooped so low as to claim the advantages inherent in a Native American heritage which you have no right to possess as is indicated by your unwillingness to take a DNA test to validate your bogus claim. As egregious as this act is, it pales in comparison to the intellectual damage you have inflicted upon the multitude of young minds you have polluted with your Progressive propaganda during your tenure as a university professor.

Pocahontas wants to IDENTIFY as Native America, and then take the ‘liberal leap’ to make it legally so , without any proof. Obviously this benefited her financially in the past, and now that ‘little white lie’ just won’t go away. Taking a cue from her role models obama and hilary, when caught in a lie, double-down on claiming it isn’t a lie, and attack the accusers as racist, bigoted, etc. Only in the liberal world can fantasies be treated as reality.

She’s just building her Democrat credentials. Lie, cheat, game the system, all Democrat essentials if you want to run for higher office. Of course if Hillary runs she has those felonies and defending the serial sex abuser in her family in her credits, tough to beat such a perfect Democrat as Hillary.